Faith During Wartime

'Gods and Generals' is a balm for war-fraught times.

The lens of history often distorts reality. What's the first thing that comes to mind about the Civil War? The cause? Slavery. The effect? The abolition of slavery.

For three and a half hours on screen, "Gods and Generals" revisits the often cookie-cutter analysis history books provide and brings the four-year struggle to life in all its complexity for a new generation. We see that the motivation behind the Civil War for both sides did not center on slavery--in fact, it was an almost unspoken undercurrent. Nationalism, territorial rights and basic insecurity all lent a hand to a nation still struggling for its identity to engage in what now seems unthinkable: civil war.

Actor Stephen Lang, who plays the film's central character Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, explained, "You can reduce it to anything you want. You can reduce it to slavery, slave's rights, but there's no reason to do that. It does it a disservice to do that. That's what's cool about this film. Aside from being vastly entertaining, it also is a lucid discussion of why it happened."

Also starring Robert Duvall as Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Jeff Daniels as Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Gods and Generals tells the story of two Civil War generals from the North and South--without pitting one against the other. Instead, it sympathizes with their plights, showing their inner turmoil and the struggle of the women they left behind. Mira Sorvina plays Chamberlain's wife, Fanny, and Kali Rocha plays Stonewall Jackson's wife, Anna (You'll remember her as a the annoyingly perky airline stewardess from "Meet the Parents"). "You realized there are no villains in this," Lang said. "There was heroism on both sides, and there were scoundrels on both sides. There were good motives and bad motives."

This is the first time Lang's character, Stonewall Jackson, has been portrayed centrally in a Civil War film. We get a historically accurate glimpse of the driving force behind Jackson's extraordinary success in dismal circumstances: his faith. Jackson's devotion was central to his life from his relationship with his wife to the battlefield. Scripture reading, prayer and devotion are treated with respect and prominence throughout the film.

"'God and Generals' does a good job of portraying Christianity. I mean, there's no 'mother f-cker' this-there's not a single cuss word in the whole movie," executive producer Ted Turner said. "I don't think there's a movie that I can remember-a major motion picture made in the United States in the last 10 years-that depicts religion with so much respect."

Turner said while this movie is vastly different from current box office fare, he believed in this film because it had a story Americans needed to revisit-one without the superficiality of our times. "It's an interesting story when we're doing all these cops and robbers and killer shows, "The Matrix," special effects and Jackie Chan and all this stuff. There was room for a movie like this. There's an old saying that when everyone else is shouting, a whisper is heard."

Shot on location on historic battlegrounds, the film began shooting more than two years ago and was being filmed on Sept. 11, 2001, when the nation was attacked by terrorists. When the news hit the camp, director Ron Maxwell stopped production. "I gathered the crew around and said, 'If anyone needs to go home just go. No problem. But I'm going to be at the camera at one o'clock. Anybody who wants to can join me.' And the entire crew, cast and re-enactors were there at one o'clock, and we continued to film ... I wasn't going to shut this movie down because those SOBs."

Maxwell said those working on the film could immediately take solace in knowing the work they were doing was in direct opposition to the people who attacked us. "Whatever we were feeling that moment-anger, pain, outrage, fear-we could take solace in the fact the work we were doing, right then and there, was about a generation of Americans who were severely tested, who endured a terrible struggle over a four-year period, and we could immediately put our feelings into the work because the work we were doing then and the work we are doing now stands in direct opposition to the people who attacked us."

A couple of days later when President George W. Bush called for a National Day of Prayer, Maxwell loaded up the cast and crew on buses and found the nearest church. "We filled the church that day and were overflowing into the parking lot," he said. "The two Lutheran pastors looked around and said, 'The last time there were that many bloody confederates and Yankees in this church was 1864 during Hunter's campaign.'"Maxwell saw parallels between the people fighting the Civil War and our generation. Although unintentional, the release of this film last weekend couldn't have been timelier as our country faces war. "It's a tough generation, the generation of the 1860s. I think we can derive some strength, understanding and solace from them."